


Staring at the Stars

by witchelmm



Series: oneshots [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Do it, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Slight pining, im so dramatic why, jercy - Freeform, just in case yall are searching that instead, just read about these gay dorks, literally so fucking cheesy kill me, lots of adjectives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 18:25:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5938477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchelmm/pseuds/witchelmm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn’t look back at Jason, because Jason wouldn’t look forward to him.</p><p>They stared. At anything. They stared at anything but each other.</p><p>Percy stared at the slick bricks of Hestia’s hearth far below them. It was still burning impossibly, although the goddess herself wasn’t visible. He stared at the water-drunk grass shivering in the wind. He stared at the mud forming in the volleyball pit. He couldn’t stare at the sky, because the sky was all Jason, Jason, Jason.</p><p>[[In Which: Percy is outwardly satisfied with his shoulder-touching. But not really.]]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staring at the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Music Listened to While Writing (that you might perhaps want to listen to while reading): "Glitterbug" by The Wombats, specifically: Be Your Shadow, Your Body is a Weapon, and Pink Lemonade. 
> 
> Have fun and don't read this if you're lactose intolerant (lethal amounts of cheese).

Jason smelled like iron, which is to say like blood, but Percy didn’t mind. It was the kind of iron you smell on a plasma ball when you stupidly press your nose against it as a little kid. Electricity. Jason smelled like electricity.

Or maybe it was just the air.

It hadn’t been either of their faults. …On purpose, that it. But it was raining in Camp Half-Blood—a storm, no less, with thunder and lightning and spectacular, tumbling clouds riding atop dark winds—and there was no one else to blame.

It hadn’t been an emotional outburst like it usually was. There was no fight, or stupid Jason-infatuated emotions (Percy really hated his brain. Or heart. Or whatever it was.) to cause it. It simply happened.

So they had gone out on cabin one’s roof. It was taller than cabin three, closer to the sky, the lights, and the action. Closer to all the chaos they’d caused.

Percy turned his face away from the rain, pressing a little harder into Jason’s shoulder. When Jason jumped a few seconds later, Percy wasn’t sure if it was because his own hand had landed subconsciously on the other’s hipbone, or if he was just anticipating the next lightning strike a second before it happened like he always did.

A plasma-oozing crack split open the sky, and Percy decided it must have been the anticipation.

Jason had said something—Percy could feel the vibrations of his voice along his chest—but Percy couldn’t hear.

“ _What?_ ”

“I said, ‘it’s big’.”

“What’s big?”

Jason gestured grandly towards the sky with the arm that wasn’t trapped under Percy’s torso. “This. All of it.”

Percy looked up towards the purple-blue-black mass and stared at it’s depth. It’s darkness, thickness, richness. It was intimidating.

He nodded. “It is.”

His voice came out funny, and apparently Jason noticed, because he turned towards Percy and studied his face. Just then, he jumped.

 _And… go._ And there was the lightning. It illuminated Jason’s face, turning it white, and his hair, platinum.

“Your hair lights up blue when the lightning strikes,” Jason commented. He brushed a strand of soaked hair out of Percy’s eyes. Percy hoped he didn’t look as embarrassed as he felt.

How was Jason always so nonchalant?

“Blue?” Percy managed, a few seconds later. Long enough to make it awkward. Jason would’ve been right on time.

Jason nodded. “Yeah. You know, I don’t think black hair really exists.”

Percy shook his head. Breathy, muted laughter. “You’re so _white_.”

Jason’s next words were drowned out by thunder.

Percy tapped at his ear with his free hand—the one that wasn’t trapped under his own torso. “What?”

“I said, ‘all the black humanity has found or created is some sort of indiscernibly dark version of another color’. As in, all black is blue, or red, or green, or… or something. It’s just science.”

Percy shook his head again. “I’m calling bullshit.”

“Rude.”

Percy turned back towards the churning sky. He squinted; something was flitting around the clouds. No, not flitting. It was too powerful. It had too much purpose. Percy was pretty sure the purpose was playing. But what would be playing in the clouds during the middle of a _thunderstorm_?

Jason had noticed where Percy was staring. He looked up, squinting, squinting more—his glasses were covered in raindrops (Percy could’ve made the rain go around them, but he liked the way Jason’s shirt clung to his ribcage)—and finally sitting up and asking, “Is that Tempest?”

Percy shrugged, sitting up with Jason. Their shoulders were touching. Gods damn, he was a fucking idiot. A fucking sappy idiot. “I don’t know, man. I haven’t seen Cloud Kicker since he tried to help you kill me.”

Jason gave him a strange look. Affectionate or confused, Percy couldn’t tell.

“Who… who the fuck is _Cloud Kicker_?”

“Look it up.”

“I don’t have a phone. You don’t have a phone. _None_ of us have phones.”

Percy shrugged, making a brave move and trying to settle back against Jason, who was sitting and leaning back with his arms behind him. Jason didn’t protest.

“I guess you’re out of luck, then.”

Jason hummed a hum, a short, contempt-y little hum, a hum of grudging acceptance. That whole sort-of gag was a normal thing. Percy felt the hum on his scalp from where Jason’s jaw pressed against it.

Jason shifted, semi-above Percy, Jason’s face in Percy’s hair. Maybe smelling it, maybe—

“—Did you just _kiss_ me?” Percy faltered, “On… on the head, I mean.”

Jason shrugged. “Yeah.”

“…W-why?”

Jason swallowed before shrugging again. False confidence. Percy might not have known algebra, but he knew people… well enough. Well, he knew Jason. He thought. “I don’t know. …Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t.”

“It’s not… it’s not like I kissed you for real.”

Percy looked at Jason. “It’s not like that at all.”

Jason shifted away a little, so Percy sat forward. He couldn’t come off as needy.

But he was. He was needy and fucking desperate.

But he couldn’t come off that way.

He didn’t look back at Jason, because Jason wouldn’t look forward to him.

They stared. At anything. They stared at anything but each other.

Percy stared at the slick bricks of Hestia’s hearth far below them. It was still burning impossibly, although the goddess herself wasn’t visible. He stared at the water-drunk grass shivering in the wind. He stared at the mud forming in the volleyball pit. He couldn’t stare at the sky, because the sky was all Jason, Jason, Jason.

Percy was so busy staring, he almost didn’t notice when Jason spoke. And what Jason had said was a one-time, _because-I’m-feeling-reckless-offer_.

Or maybe it was a one-time, _I-nervously-overthought-this offer_.

It didn’t matter. Jason said it. And Percy heard him.

“What if I…” Jason stopped. Percy didn’t turn to look at Jason, but he nodded with his back to him to show him that he was listening. He pulled his knees up to his chin.

Jason tried again, his voice stronger. “…What if I _did_ kiss you for real?”

Percy still didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to look at Jason. He didn’t know if he didn’t want to look at Jason because he was mad at him or because he was too not mad at him.

He didn’t want to look at Jason.

He really, _really_ wanted to look at Jason.

“Run… run that by me a… again?”

It was the best Percy could manage. His mouth had gone dry. His brain had gone dryer.

“What if I kissed you for real? What would you do?”

“I… I don’t know what I’d do.”

Jason placed a tentative hand on Percy’s shoulder. “…Do you… do you want to find out?”

Percy turned. He had to search Jason’s face before answering, just to make sure he wasn’t joking, just to make sure he wasn’t being an idiot. Or a liar. Or an asshole.

Jason searched Percy’s face as well. Percy didn’t know what Jason was looking for, but his preoccupied mind left his motives out in the open. And Percy couldn’t find a single malicious thing about them.

“…Sure.”

Jason met Percy’s eyes again. He seemed to forget what they had been talking about. Percy laughed his ‘ _you’re a complete dork_ ’ laugh that he hadn’t even known had a name until then, but it was tinged with anxiety.

“Sure, I’d like to find out. What I’d do if you kissed me. For real.”

Percy did that annoying thing where he got lost in his own brain for a few seconds and missed a lifetime. One minute he was looking at the nervous and paradoxically relieved expression of Jason’s somehow soft (but still Roman… Percy was still trying to figure that one out) features, and the next minute he was tasting Jason’s lips.

Jason tasted like iron, which is to say like blood, but Percy didn’t mind. Jason’s hand was on shoulder, right where it met with his neck. (It had a name. Percy _knew_ that the shoulder-neck-place had a name.)

Percy was shifting—a knee on either side of Jason’s hips—or maybe he was being pulled. Percy was moving forward, and Jason was moving back. Percy was moving back, and Jason was moving forward. The whole act was strangely reminiscent of fighting. The whole thing was a lip-biting calculation.

Only this time, his lips were being bitten by someone else.

And then he couldn’t breathe, and Jason was breaking away more frequently, and coming back (of course) but then he was gone, and Percy was too nervous for him to ever be gone. So he stopped.

The air still smelled like iron… stronger, sharper, and harsher now. It had started raining harder, and if it hadn’t been Percy’s fault before, it was now, without a doubt.

Jason wasn’t talking. His eyes were closed. Percy knew the feeling. He wouldn’t dare to look if he hadn’t known that Jason would be the same way. Jason’s forehead was pressed softly to Percy’s, and it was incredibly cliché, but Percy adored it. Or maybe Percy adored Jason. Or maybe he just adored everything in that moment.

He fucking adored everything in that moment.

“So, that’s what I’d do,” Percy said.

Jason took a few moments to answer. When he did, it was a slow, low, “What did you do?”

“I kissed back,” Percy said. “And then I kissed you again.”

And then he kissed Jason again.

And when they were done—although they would never truly be done— Percy stared at the sky, because the sky was all Jason, Jason, Jason.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (Slightly inspired by imaginejercy 's [tumblr] post about Jason and Percy sitting together in the rain because they are the Storm Children)


End file.
